Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Gilchrist Blue and a field in High Springs

Tank fills in cave country are the bomb diggety :D

Also, the fill station at EE has whips that you pull right into your car and fill 4 sets of doubles at once. Not having to lug the Big Berthas back and forth every evening is totes awesome-sauce.
Cave 1, Day 1

0830 start at EE meant this was the one day in the entire week we could sleep in a little bit. The house we were staying at was a 15min drive from the shop which was great for overall logistics. Lectures started in the usual GUE fashion. It didn't take long for us to figure out Mer is completely nuts. Nuts about caves, nuts about diving, nuts about teaching and sharing her experiences and nuts about conservation. The best kinda nuts you want a teacher to be.

We decided to do the swim test before lunch so we could take advantage of the afternoon warmth. We went to Gilchrist Blue Spring and Mer laid out some tape in the run to mark 25m; we were to swim along that for the breath hold and the 400yd swim. This would be different than what I'm used to in the pool because there's no pushing off of the wall. I went for the breath hold immediately without any warm up and easily made the entire length. The swim was easy too and completed in just over 9min, even with my atrocious breast stroke technique.

After lunch, we did some more lecture and line following field drills in the, uh, field behind the shop. As it got dark, we wrapped up with regulator and post failures in the back of the van before calling it a day.

Great Outdoors was poppin' at dinner time for half-off burger night. 

 - U